Slashdot Mirror
Florida Teen Charged With Felony Hacking For Changing Desktop Wallpaper
colinneagle writes: A 14-year-old middle school student in Holiday, Florida, was arrested this week and charged with "an offense against a computer system and unauthorized access," which is a felony. The student reportedly used an administrator password to log into a teacher's computer and change the background image to a photo of two men kissing.
The student also revealed his secrets after he was caught – the password was the teacher's last name, and the teacher had typed it in in full view of the students. The student said many other students used these administrators' passwords (their teachers' last names) so they can screen-share and video chat with other students. The student was briefly held in a nearby detention center, and the county Sheriff warned that other teenagers caught doing the same thing will "face the same consequences."
The student also revealed his secrets after he was caught – the password was the teacher's last name, and the teacher had typed it in in full view of the students. The student said many other students used these administrators' passwords (their teachers' last names) so they can screen-share and video chat with other students. The student was briefly held in a nearby detention center, and the county Sheriff warned that other teenagers caught doing the same thing will "face the same consequences."
Twart future terrorists in their tracks must.
Who is Jeff and who is Jim.
when I was a kid
the things I might have done....
picking the mimeograph of the test out of the trash if its in public isn't even a criminal offense...
Can we just give Florida back to Spain or something?
The question every person in authority should be in the habit of asking is: "Am I using the least amount of my authority possible to accomplish my immediate goals?"
To get a peace officer badge, A Clockwork Orange should be mandatory viewing with a discussion to follow, and an arrest for not understanding it. I think peace officers who don't understand the point of that movie are at least as likely to commit serious crimes as 8th graders who tamper with screen savers. I'm willing to be proven wrong.
Hah. On the Windows 3.1 systems at my high school I would change the screensaver message to something like "FUCK THA POLICE" or whatever and then use the ATTRIB command to mark WIN.INI as read-only, meaning it was impossible to change the message back using the UI.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
It's rare that a jury should exercise "jury nullification" but cases like these, where the punishment does not fit the crime, are one of them.
Acquitting a guilty person when the charge is over-the-top for the circumstances sends a loud message to prosecutors to dial-it-back to something sane the next time around.
If there wasn't a history of other students doing the same thing, filing misdemeanor criminal charges in juvenile court with a pre-arranged deal where they charges would be dismissed and the arrest expunged within 1-2 years would not be inappropriate.
Because there is such a history, even this is too much. This should have been handled as an internal disciplinary and/or re-training matter for the student and, in parallel, for the faculty so this kind of thing doesn't happen again.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Obviously, he should have set it to a photo of two women kissing. Then the teacher wouldn't have been so mad!
More serious than misdemeanor manslaughter.
Finally, we are teaching our children that justice is truly blind. It cannot see that we are charging the child, a 14 year-old, with a felony that will last the rest of his life. Never mind any jobs that the kid may try to get in the future. He is now a felon and shall be treated as such.
Seriously though. He is just a child. I believe in making sure it is shown that what he did was wrong, but treating him as a full blown felon? Disgraceful.
That whoosh you heard was the last bit of common sense leaving the US's shores. Not that there has been much of it in the last couple of decades (almost none of it, really).
One time, I used a command prompt instruction to circumvent the 'security' our high school computer lab teacher had used to prevent students from accessing the Control Panel in Windows 3.1. The mouse tracking speed had been set too high, and the computer was difficult to use, so I fixed it. The teacher accused me of "hacking" and I was kicked out of the computer lab for the rest of the school year. That teacher probably still runs a computer lab; I grew up and went to work for Microsoft. I hope this kid is as lucky.
Most acceptable use policies would require the teacher to understand that actions taken with his credentials are his responsibility. As the teachers own password was used, he or she should bear the responsibilities of the action.
Sheriff Nocco seems to be taking this threat seriously.
This "threat". How refreshing would it be if Sheriff Nocco appropriately laughed at the teacher, said they had both done worse as kids, and lightly chastized the guy for wasting his time because he had real crimes to work on.
But Nocco apparently wanted to send a message, and won't hesitate to lock up more teenagers for trying to use Skype in school.
Message received. Chris Nocco was apparently Deputy Chief of Staff to the Speaker of the House Marco Rubio and a graduate of the FBI National Executive Institute. Seems our tax dollars being wasted on intimidating children is the real "threat" here.
I did this to a friend, on his Christmas computer. Him, his father and his Marine buddies all seriously contemplated killing me. They were utterly furious and I didn't return for a long time. Of course, the gentleman featured on the desktop were unclothed in addition, but aren't we all, in a sense? Good fun, indeed.
But really, there are some pretty loud crickets when the state gets a hardon for arresting/harrassing children.
While the students should not be messing with the teacher's computers, this is on the teacher or teachers that are using their last names as passwords, and letting students see them type their passwords. What the student did was not something to be arrested for, just playing a prank.
I once played a prank on a friend. I did a screenshot of his desktop, hid all of his icons in a folder, and set the screenshot as his wallpaper. The point is that kids will play pranks even on teachers that they like if they can. Don't want them messing with a computer? Use better password security, and don't let anyone see your keyboard when you type in passwords!
It's the American way!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If you obviously don't understand what the kid did, they how do you expect people to believe that your judgment is fair?
Its clear in this situation the kid is the only one who knows that a computer isn't a magic box with pretty lights.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
Sheriff warned that other teenagers caught doing the same thing will "face the same consequences
How refreshing would it be if Sheriff Nocco appropriately laughed at the teacher, said they had both done worse as kids, and lightly chastized the guy for wasting his time because he had real crimes to work on.
That's probably how 99.99% of sheriff/LEO reacts, and then, there is this 0.01% who seem to think they are white knights in shinny armor fighting a crusade which makes the other 99.99% looks like waffen-SS... I wonder if MSM have an agenda...
Sometimes you have to look at how these laws are being applied, and fight back the overwhelming urge to slap the stupid from the people who pursue these charges. And it might take a lot of slapping.
This is a high school prank, nothing more.
Honestly, the people who are filing felony charges of complete morons.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Damn wallpaper changers. They are a menace to society! I can't count how many sleepless nights I have suffered worrying about someone changing wallpapers on computers. Soon anyone could be changing the wallpaper on their own computers. It's anarchy, I tell you!!
Thank God the police are doing something about this.
.. seriously. People (teacher, principal, cops, judge) presumably took great offence here because of the content. "Christian convervatives" don't tolerate homosexuality well, and *that* is the reason this kid had to be made an example of.
The fact that the teacher didn't know how to choose a strong password, or the cops didn't understand this to be a meaningless prank does aggravate the sense that these authority figures are not only conservative, but relatively dumb too...
Glad to hear that the kid wasn't shot in the back 8 times while trying to get away.
Congrats, student!
Your instructor has been awarded an F grade.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Oh, wait
Green was released on Wednesday from Land O'Lakes Detention Center into the custody of his mother.
Really? From the Land 'O Lakes website:
Land O’Lakes, Inc. is one of America’s premiere member-owned cooperatives. We offer local cooperatives and agricultural producers across the nation an extensive line of agricultural supplies, as well as state-of-the-art production and business services. We also are a leading marketer of dairy-based food products for consumers, foodservice professionals and food manufacturers.
I guess they need to add "We also provide a wide variety of incarceration services."
I actually hacked into my high school's Novell network when I was 15 (~20 years ago) and wasn't charged with any crime, though it was considered. I was suspended out of our school for 10 days and fined but that's it.
Maybe the teacher should be reprimanded for negligence.
a few decades and the kid would have been asked to do junior admin stuff after school.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
I would have been in serious trouble, messing with computers everywhere and anywhere was my thing from school, to the library, to the Radio Shack in the mall my friends and I would do all kinds of nefarious things like taking over the schools network by installing keystroke loggers in the library to gather all of the passwords and then locking the administrators out of the network. Logging in as someone else and spreading viruses in an attempt to get them into trouble. Suffice it to say I earned a pretty long ban on touching school computers, but if desktop wall paper is a felony I don't want to know what the damage I did would get.
A basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things, which is shared by ("common to") nearly all people, and can be reasonably expected of nearly all people without any need for debate.
What is Common Sense? Exactly
The student observed the teacher's keyboard while the password was typed in. The student then used that observed password to unlawfully gain access to the system in question.
This has nothing to do with the wallpaper. The student leveraged unauthorized access to a system to do something.
Headline seems kind of slanted to me. Didn't include the "two men kissing" part there trying to make it feel like the schools are overreacting. Always the problem with Slashdot.
Kid's lucky they didn't toss on a hate crime charge on top just to make sure he never saw the light of day again.
So, with the continued attitude that anyone who changes a parameter from the default setting is suddenly a "terrorist", I can only assume that the push for more CS in schools today is nothing more than a lobbyist-driven push to fill privatized prisons.
It might as well be, with felony threats against a 14-year old. Don't be surprised when you can't get any gender to fill a CS classroom with idiotic law enforcement reactions like this.
I think I'd have been put away for life, if I was younger and in the US, or possibly tasered, charged with assulting a cop's fist with my face then shot.
When I were a lad and the school computers ran Windows 95 (all spiffy and shiny and new they were), I created a trojan floppy which renamed and overwrote some key executables which autoexec.bat with my own ones. My ones passed on the arguments to the true ones so the boot process worked as usual and it was very hard to see that it was trojaned.
Of course they were set to "go off" on a certain date as a prank on a teacher who was being a dick and who many people had complained about and nothing changed.
All you had to do was slip in the floppy, reboot and it would install the trojan. Of course once word got around everyone wanted in on the act so I had to do very little of the legwork to trojan the entire computer lab.
I got a "yeah very funny (snigger) don't do that again mmmmkay?" talk.
And that was it.
Come to think of it I was always pissing around and hacking.
What is school if not a safe environment for kids to learn stuff and learn where the boundaries are?
Everyone involved in this charge should be hounded out of office and publicly shamed for being reprehensible humans.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This is similar to charging Harry Potter to send him to prison, for a simple use of underage magic outside of school.
In this case it's a harmless prank, and a notice to the teacher to be better at protecting the password. But the stupid school decides to become the tyrant by helping others to be tyrants.
This school is not qualified to teach my children.
But it does. Sadly, it does.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... no doubt if i was in america at his age i would have life in a max security for the easter egg click bate scripts i scattered over my school network through privilege escalation.
If you are an even mildly above average computer user the clear message here is stay the hell away from America, it's judicial system is run by people who think computers are black magic, and anyone capable with them that did something even slightly against the rules is a witch and should be burned.
Since states are now legalizing POT, the numbers are starting to Drop. So they've made the bar way lower on computer mucking!
We gotta do something to keep the damn prisons filled!
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
People like you help enable state sponsored terror.
Green had previously received a three-day suspension for accessing the system inappropriately. Other students also got in trouble at the time, he said. . . . Green said that on the morning in question, he accessed the computer that stored the FCAT files and, realizing that computer didn't have a camera, found another. "So I logged out of that computer and logged into a different one and I logged into a teacher's computer who I didn't like and tried putting inappropriate pictures onto his computer to annoy him," Green said.
So the kid received a warning the first time. He knew that what he was doing could get him in trouble, but he decided to harass the teacher anyway. Too bad they aren't allowed to paddle.
As a sysadmin this brings me to tears of anger because this isnt the kids fault and instead of learning about the system or security, theyre just learning what it feels like to be incarcerated without due process.
a competent IT department for the education system has likely determined a best-practices for passwords but been overruled by administrators and staff citing computers, their difficulty, and their ironic unwillingness to themselves learn. Result: easy passwords. Instead of paperwork, meetings with staff, meetings with IT, and a documented record of a potential lapse in workplace best practises the educators have decided to railroad some poor kid into a trial offer of the prison pipeline and continue with school, business as usual.
Good people go to bed earlier.
At least he didn't just take 8 bullets to the back.
So should someone who steals $2 million and a kid who steals a pencil sharpener both be given the same jail sentence?
This is the same. Never mind that what he did with his ILLEGAL access was completely harmless (the pencil sharpener would actually slightly damage the shop keepers income if only slightly).
... absolutist
Criminal Charges are based on statutes the statutes for Computer related crimes are posted here
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0800-0899/0815/0815.html
put simply he accessed the system without Given consent and that is a chargeable offense.
In 8th grade this one guy used pc anywhere or whatever was around back then to remote into a computer being used by a much younger student and started typed YOU WILL DIE. There was a flap, but it didn't involve police.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
... it gives juries a way out when they believe the law is unjust.
What do you do with unjust laws? Why, keep them, of course! And the justice department agrees. It likes to have the tools to produce convitions for everyone, or at least scare people so they'll agree to whatever plea "deal" they'll offer their latest victim. Unless their victim commits suicide, but that's the victim's doing, honest.
No? That not a good plan? Then maybe petition your representatives to get that law repealed. And any other overbroad law, while at it.
What's wrong with this one? It's overbroad and vague. It criminalises but doesn't define "hacking", which is itself already meaningless thanks to the s'kiddies in the computer security industry (all of them, there's no original, merit badge hackers there, never were). There probably should be a law against "computer trespass" or something to that tune, but it should refrain from using popular scare words and the terms it does use should be properly defined and match that definition, ie not arbitrary redefinitions.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
First they pressed you. Then they re-pressed you. Now you are flat.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The teacher who used their own last name as an admin password is an idiot and should be reprimanded.
But an unlocked door is not an invitation to come in and snoop around someone's house, even if all you do is swap some picture frames around. That's what the kid did. It was unauthorized tresspassing. He should be suspended. If he'd done something worse, he should be expelled and/or prosecuted. Also, we don't know what else he did, and even if it was nothing, not coming down hard on this will make other students think this kind of violation is not a big deal. Unauthorized access IS a big deal, because commonly enough it's done for nefarious purposes, like changing grades or getting a peek at exam questions. Also, tresspassing in general is wrong.
As for the two men kissing, who cares. In 100 years, that'll be as not a big deal as interracial kissing is right now. If the photo is overly sexual in some way, then perhaps there may be an added problem of inappropriateness. In our current culture and all things being equal, a photo of a man and a woman kissing is more likely to be considered "romantic", while two people of the same sex kissing is going to be interpreted more sexually. That's not exactly fair, though, and if the school were to openly interpret it that way, they'd get into a world of shit politically.
Hack away kids and make your teachers' gayness blossom, like spring flowers and unicorns at the Central Park! How else you could be the part of the next the 100? The container is waiting at the shore of the Gulf of Mexico.
Seriously the teacher should be the one on the hot seat for not properly maintaining system security by letting others see the password and for having such a simple password.
Was a simple, after-school detention not an option for some reason? I mean, really? You called the police? Did da big bad hacker scare you wif his eweet skills? Jumping Jesus on a pogostick! They're kids, mischievous by nature. Give the kid a detention, and institute a sane fucking password policy!
If I were a parent of a child in this school, I'd be outraged. I'm outraged right now, and I don't live anywhere near Florida!
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
The sheriff in this case sounds like he read a Judge Dredd comic and assumed it was supposed to be a manual for how the justice system should work.
You there! Are you running an unauthorized hex-editor?! That is a capital offense. I'd read you your rights, but as of today, you have none.
"Sheriff Nocco seems to be taking this threat seriously. The report says the student "was released on Wednesday from Land O'Lakes Detention Center into the custody of his mother," which means the kid was brought into a holding cell for the incident, which sounds completely unnecessary. But Nocco apparently wanted to send a message, and won't hesitate to lock up more teenagers for trying to use Skype in school."
So, uh..., why aren't we "sending a message" to the dumb-fuck faculty who are, no doubt, violating policy by using such weak access control procedures? Better question, why didn't the reporter think to ask that question?
That says it all.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
If he had not put 2 Gay men kissing on the desktop this would be a non story and he would not have been charged. But this is Merica!!! and clearly this kid is a problem, we should use him to up our chances to be Sheriff in the next voting season.
Sometimes I'm disgusted with my country more than normal.
You must be German.
If you follow all of the link you'll find out that the student did more than change wallpaper. He went and observed the FCAT files and was on other computers as well. Also there seems to be more than one student doing this. It seems at the moment that this kid is the first one charged for hacking.
of when I was in high school in the mid 90s. Thankfully I didn't have to deal with criminal charges however.
Back when computer classes were still a new thing in high schools, I was attending introduction to computers for my first period. We'd all come in and turn on the computers and watch them boot up Windows 95.
These computers had a virus scan set to run during boot up, and on that particular day, it had found a virus. I waved the teacher over and pointed it out.
From that point on I was forbidden to take any computer classes in high school ever again.
I think a few of them need "time outs" also, for being so stupid as to have a simple password, THEN typing it in, IN FRONT OF THE STUDENTS.
Why do teachers have admin rights to begin with?
Kids need to learn the consequences of embarrassing powerful people. That is one of the golden rules of modern society; thou shalt not embarrass thy superiors. Snowden forgot that, and this little punk forgot that.
You respect your betters, or you get tossed in a cage. That's the law. Ingrain that into your kid's brains before puberty hits, or they will wind up in a cage too.
And it's not even an unlocked door. It's a lock door with the key taped to the front of the door. So you still have to break-in to trespass. I don't know if that's a requirement for it being a violation of the CFAA or not.
They should also charge the teacher for being complicit. The teacher knowingly and willingly typed in their password in front of people that should not have access to the system, thus providing them the tools to access the system without authorization. As far as I understand school officials take on a temporary legal responsibility as parent and are therefore responsible for their "children's" actions.
Yes, and trespassing (in the real world) is a misdemeanor, generally speaking. Not a felony, a misdemeanor. Why should the equivalent on a computer be any different?
That said, I doubt most prosecutors would bother if someone reported that someone else had trespassed to leave a photo. They'd probably tell you to lock your door.
Even without admin rights, the students should not be using teachers' accounts.
One more reason to _not_ send your kids to public school.
... He wasn't charged with hacking for changing a desktop background. He was charged with hacking for discovering and then using the teacher's password to log into the computer and THEN change the background. He's being charged for a crime for doing what he did prior to changing the background.
If I break into someone's home and then proceed to just move their stuff around, I'm not charged with Breaking and Entering for moving their stuff around. I'm charged with breaking and entering for BREAKING AND ENTERING.
I'm not sure what is the difference (in any philosophical sense) between (a) exploiting a known vulnerability to hack in that they should have fixed ages ago, (b) using social engineering to get someone to inadvertently give you access, or (c) guessing someone's really stupid password.
All of them are "abuse" of a secured system.
For that matter, say a teacher stays logged in and goes to the bathroom, and while they're away, some students use the teacher's account. So it's wide open, and the teacher was stupid for doing that. But this is kinda like leaving your car running with the keys in while you run into the 7-11. If someone steals your car, they're still stealing your car, even if you made it easy for them to do it.
Students should live in deathly fear of what horrible things might happen to them if they inappropriately access a teacher's computer account. A misdemeanor charge may not be enough to get through to them.
The teen brain is interesting. They're almost too logical. If they knew the real statistics about pregnancy and STD's, a lot more of them would be fucking, and then that would actually alter the statistics. This is why teachers and parents commonly make it sound like every sexual encounter leads to disease, ruined lives, and all manner of other scary things. Well, disease and ruined lives happen often enough that people need to be *extremely* cafeful about it, but teens are not exacly known for their mature and careful choices.
So if this student gets punished in proportion to the crime (basically a slap on the wrist), it is a real concern that this kind of intrusion may start to happen more often, because the risks to the perpetrators are so low.
why is it so hard to distinguish between a serious crime and a minor lesson. I swear it isn't that big of a mystery. Punishment yes, a criminal record NO!!! Show me one person who never did anything foolish or majorly stupid and I'll show you a liar.
See my other post. The idea isn't so much to make the punishment for teenagers more than for adults but to make the punishment SCARIER. The more I think about this, this student should get charged with a felony and then have that expunged from their record at 18. It needs to be a super big deal to everyone so that other students don't think they'll get away with the same shit.
This is a high school prank, nothing more.
The kid wasn't even in high school. It it is a middle school prank.
When I was in school and got in a fight, they didn't call the cops a charge us with assault. They handled it at the school....
When I was in grade school (I think 4th grade), I got perturbed at my computer teacher because I would get the "googly eyes" all day long. This was an old school screen share program, and given that machines were already pretty slow at the time, I got impatient with the reduced performance.
So the next morning I took a screenshot of my teacher's desktop (she was a dimwit, had no password) and set it as the background. Moved all of the icons off of the screen.
It took her 2 days to figure it out. I enjoyed those days to proceed to "violate copyright" by sourcing an image of a mushroom in a local HTML website I put together. I'm glad they never found out, or it's likely I'd have been put on antipsychotics or somesuch.
...as the dumbest state in the union.
I currently live in Florida and will happily soon move to a different state. This story is typical of the stupid people in Florida who have absolutely no common sense and cannot tell the difference between a harmless school prank and a crime.
The real crime here is that the teacher is so stupid as to be so careless with passwords.
Just because they didn't hide it? The kid was obviously an asshole, even if I see a persons password I will not log into their account. An arrest might be a bit much but a slap on the wrist is surly in order. Show some respect to other people even if they trust in you (or just don't know that a lot of people are assholes).
they may need a $300/hour consultant as at least this shows that there password rules suck. And who knows how bad the rest of the IT system is there.
Hell put the kid on the hook for that 50-80K a year cost to hire one more full time IT person.
Well, there was the book report on the Satanic Bible ... confiscation and parents called...
Making explosives in Chem lab after school... police questioning...
Then stringing the Ass. Principal and coach paddles up the flagpole with GG-size bra and jock straps... did not get caught....
As well as numerous other less-spectacular pranks....
Now have PhD, and still like pranks, but choose timing and methods/materials much more carefully....
I'm sure there is a "life hack" for that...
One of my pet peeves is the overuse of the word "hacking" or "hack" in contexts that doesn't make sense or are just incorrect.
In this case, there was no hacking involved. He knew the password and used it. Unauthorized access isn't hacking. Then again people with a bias or agenda will use terms for impact, just like "theft" and "stealing" when used in context of copyright infringement.
To me, when people do that with words, they are just explaining to people either A) how biased they are, or B) how little they understand the subject at hand. Either way, not worth reading or listening to.
After guessing my schools admin password "JC1997 which they changed" I changed my entire schools computer lab homepage to whitehouse.com back when it was still a porn site. You know what happened? They let me off with a warning and banned me from using the lab for two weeks. Skip forward two years. I guessed it again "JC1999 SMFH" and changed it to a nasty .cx website. Saturday detention and banned from the lab for the rest of the year. 37 days
I get that the student shouldn't have done it, but using a password that clearly wasn't meant to be secret (unless the teacher is an invalid with what we know about password safety these days) is hardly considering hacking.
Maybe it was a job security thang?
This is actually fairly upsetting news.
Instead of just whining on a forum... does anyone have any ideas on what can actually be done for this kid? Should we start a fund for his defense? Can we organize a local protest? Should we write letters to local officials?
In a democracy it's up to the citizens to stand up and say when something isn't right. And this most definitely is NOT right. This kid's life is going to be ruined because of a prank. Insane.
Computer teachers and district network administrators hate being shown up by some snot-nose kid. The DA will charge this kid with unauthorized use of a computer system, typically a fourth degree felony, and the school will likely change none of their security practices. After all, becoming a teenage felon is a pretty good deterrent, right?
Who needs a password policy? Who needs two-factor auth? They'll just arrest anybody that embarrasses them.
This kind of crap happened at my high school 20 years ago. They ignored warnings about gaping security holes, coming down hard on the whistleblowers (i.e. me), then saw their network go down when some other kid exploited it months later.
They said "teachers", it sounds more like lazy IT that got bored of resetting passwords, and issued all machines with the given teachers last name as the password.
The only one who "deserves" any sort of punishment is the teacher for using his last name as a password.
I am so glad that I grew up in the real world, and not this pansy ass, liberal, bullshit place that the world has now turned into. When I was a kid if you did something like this you got a slap on the wrist, and two days detention! You sure in the hell didn't get arrested, and charged with felony hacking! Man it must suck to be a kid these days!!!!!
we had a rash of bomb threats after 9/11. I live in a town with more cows than people, and they took every one of the threats dead seriously. Immediately after the first threat came in, all students were required to have either clear or mesh backpacks and every student's person was thoroughly searched upon entering the school. The worst event came when, in a middle school (which is attached to the high school) a student left a yellow legal pad note stating "bin laden should fly a plane into the school) We had a full lock down, students were ordered to congregate in the gym. (because what better way to avoid a bomb than to put everyone in the same room). My point here is this: Schools with a "zero tolerance" policy are quick to pull the trigger and make everything a worst case scenario.
These two men?
If it is a felony is there not a minimum prison sentence attached to it? If so then the boy will be put in a prison with some other guys possibly big fellows with multiple life sentences. I am sure that will teach him to follow the rules.
Child hood friends of mine would do such things as create dos boot disks that would contain "format C: /u /autotest" in the autoexec.bat file and put them into demo computers at the local wal-mart. Or play doom on the lan during "programming class". Or monkey with disks in the local library. Of course back then Mac's and Windows OS's had easily exploited holes and there wasn't much need for admin usernames and passwords. That said a few days suspension is probably all students faced(followed by staff requesting the student to help them teach computer classes). Pressing charges on a student is probably not the best way to enforce good behaviors. The teacher(s) should also be reprimanded at the very least to use better password and password sharing judgement. Leave your desktop unlocked? At my workplace you would be asking for kitty pictures or I love Microsoft messages on your desktop/browser.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Could have prevented all this havoc.
Especially because he put GAY GUYS on the computer, the horrors. If he had changed the wallpaper to a cat picture this would not have happened I guarantee it.
Don't be an idiot.
Green said that on the morning in question, he accessed the computer that stored the FCAT files and, realizing that computer didn't have a camera, found another.
''So I logged out of that computer and logged into a different one and I logged into a teacher's computer who I didn't like and tried putting inappropriate pictures onto his computer to annoy him,'' Green said.
The teacher he was targeting was out that day. Instead, the substitute teacher saw the picture and reported it to the school's administration.
Middle school student charged with cybercrime in Holiday
Release? Released? Why should such a dangerous hax0r ever be released? He should be locked away forever in Gitmo or some SuperMax :)
Seriously, "unauthorized access" looks most like the cyber-equivalent of the ancient infraction of trespass. The same common-law defenses should apply (here the concept of "attractive nuisance").
Pandering to the fear of the ignorant with draconian punishments is the very opposite of liberty. And progress will suffer for the witchhunts (already has).
...article doesn't mention ethnicity, but from the treatment, it sounds like the kid is black...
In college I had an autorun entry on my USB flash drive that ran a program that changed the background. Nobody cared.
If some moron walks into your house through an unlocked door and begins riffling through your things, that's trespassing. As the home's resident, you're entitled to apprehend them and prosecute. Same thing here. These delinquents will either learn or they will remain morons.
What SHOULD have happened in this case is that the kid should have been given a few days of detention. All of the teachers should have been made to change their passwords, not type them in when students can see and not let students use them. And the student body should have been given a warning that anyone caught messing with the computers or using the teachers passwords will get a few days detention.
If the same student re-offends (and continues to mess with the computers) they can then be given a suspension.
I remember laughing how if Steve Wozniak or Steve Jobs did half of what they did as teenagers/young adults now (selling blue boxes, aka phone phreaking) they'd be felons who'd have lost a decade+ of their useful lives.
And now I'm realizing how it'd have probably happened to me due to incidents in high school of hitting the debugger key on the Macs to get past the nanny software, or when we figured out the passwords were generated as a guessable pattern. This led to teenagers doing goofy and stupid things to have a laugh and impress each other. At the time, this led to a suspension and blacklist from the honor society and such, but now would lead to straight up felonies.
I don't consider this a democrat or republican issue, as we can find examples of both pushing this -- but this cycle of fear and stripping away opportunities to learn and grow in the name of safety and conformity has to stop.
My old place of work we used to pull all kinds of shit on other techies when they were on vacation. One gentleman had the honor of his homepage being reset to a porn site and all icons on the screen changed to dicks. The PC techies were a close bunch so thankfully no one involved HR :P In school we used to hack out of our Novell shell to play games in DOS. At the most this kind of prank should require in-school suspension. An arrest for a felony is absolutely absurd.
It shouldn't even be a criminal charge. It may be a crime by the letter of the law, but c'mon, this couldn't be handled in-house?!
Green had previously received a three-day suspension for accessing the system inappropriately.
Green was released on Wednesday from Land O'Lakes Detention Center into the custody of his mother. He'll likely be granted pretrial intervention by a judge, sheriff's detective Anthony Bossone said.
Green also received a 10-day school suspension. It's unclear if he'll return to Paul R. Smith to complete the school year after the suspension.
Middle school student charged with cybercrime in Holiday
Individuals who successfully complete a Pretrial Intervention Program will have their criminal charges dismissed.
Pretrial Intervention is for first offenders charged with third degree misdemeanors or felonies. Violate your PTI and you will be looking at a very pissed off judge and prosecutor.
Understanding Florida's Pre-Trial Intervention Program
Relatives should kill the cops and free the kid.
This is how it was when men had families and clans.
This govt should be rejected.
who employs a 'criminal'? and ffs, who lets schools waste the taxpayers money by going after kids doing things that kids should do (challenge etc).. this is a part of maturing for everyone and while some taker it further this was not far by any standards.
For me who did not grow up in the US I can say this would be something if even noticed you would get a bit of barking for at best, dragged to court would be impossible and I personally only see it as a massive and complete misuse of governmental (put tax payers money here to understand you pay for this) resources.
I think that a fine == the value of the 'institute' that filed this x 10 would equalize the damage they were trying to inflict.
You know a school has a handle on educating our children on technology when the article states:
'We are in the process of changing the network password.'
You better be.
Keep your mouth shut.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Did you say gay cats kissing men? Eeeww!
what if the administration is totally technologically ignorant, and think that this kind of situation requires a $300/hour consultant to come in and "clean" the "infected" machine? Stupid people have all types of higher costs, and if you make them incur those costs, they will blame you, not themselves.
Stupid people have no place in education in the first place. And this is 2015, not 1995 - any intelligent person can be at least reasonably knowledgeable about computers so as not to use their names as their passwords, etc.
I think this is another example of American authoritarianism. Soon they will call the cops on you if you so much as look at another person. And the cops will first tase and then arrest you if you don't volunteer for punishment as soon as they arrive.
Why didn't they just shoot him in the back? Will that be tomorrows story?
In Wisconsin, a police officer can interrogate a student who is a minor all he wants unless the student is a suspect, the school district has a policy forbidding it, or the parent is present (and objects). I was surprised to discover this when my son was questioned as a witness before anyone said anything to us about it. My son came home and struggled a bit with explaining that he was questioned by the police. My son has comprehension problems (he's getting better) and I don't think he really understood what was going on.
...and I could tell how I got kicked off the school's timeshare account. It was my partner-in-crime who got us caught. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot -- GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
Authorities that do this are common animals, and deserve to be treated as such.
I did this to my C.S. college professor a few days ago. The only distinction being that the wallpaper I used was a cute puppy, and we already have a good rapport based on projects he has assigned to me.
He used it as a teaching moment for the class to talk about default configurations, easy-to-guess passwords, and a reminder to not get complacent about security practices.
Since the school board in TFA would equate me with Al Capone, I guess I need to post this as AC.
In particular, they need to be beat over the head with a copy of the 8th amendment until sane.
This is Florida, correct? Isn't their system something like:
1. YELLATUM!
2. GETEMRUNNIN!
3. CHUTUM!
4. DONCHATALKERBUTGLABALWURMIN!
~X~
This was less of a crime than hiding a bucket of water over a door for the teacher to walk through. Charging a kid with a felony is vastly disproportionate to the crime committed.
The first supreme court justice John Jay said to vote your conscience. The people themselves are final check against stupid laws.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
This isn't funny. This student violated his teacher's religious freedom.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
AFAIK Florida doesn't have a federal agreement to enforce cyber laws.
Who also isn't shot for being there. Otherwise just another day on the force.
In soviet florida the wallpaper changes you
Sure, it's illegal, if if there's no intention to cause harm to anyone, what's the point of severely punishing him?
You do the crime, you do the time.
If you see your neighbor get a key from behind a rock and you use it to enter the house and watch TV it's still a crime.
We can't have this kind of behavior in our schools. If he was old enough to hack, he is old enough to do the time. GITMO for wallpaper terrorists!
A staple for pedagogues everywhere...
You people are bat shit crazy.
Singed, the rest of the western world.
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
I'm imagining a job interview with this guy in 15-20 years.
"So, have you ever been arrested?"
"Yes, once when I was 14"
"So what did you do?"
"I changed my teachers wallpaper on his computer to a couple of gay guys kissing."
"LOL, good job. I see you have a sense of humor. You're hired, but if you ever do that to my computer I'll fire your ass, okay?"
Sadly, when they get to the "have you ever been convicted of a felony" question, a lot of employers are forced to say "sorry, we aren't allowed to hire you for this position due to legal/contractual/insurance-carrier requirements". But that's a discussion for another time.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Must not be enough murders, rapes or cop shootings, had to find something to do.
OK - he was released from detention (to his mother, no father mentioned) the same day he was arrested and pre-trial intervention by a judge is going to be allowed. This means a judge can make him do some kind of community service and expunge his record.
It appears to be not much more than a slap on the wrist for this repeat offender who specifically targeted a teacher. A 'scare him straight' move by the adults in charge. Teachers are people too.
I think the criminal here is the teacher for using a weak password and allowing otbers to shoulder surf
Every adult he's encountered from his teachers to the sheriff are idiots and liars, not to be trusted.
I guess the teacher's, cops, and politicians in Florida all have to act like the shape of their state!
The kid should be rewarded for exposing their dumb ass security and the teacher should be fired for being too stupid to be teaching anyone.
Have you been changing people's desktop wall-paper again? .... Mr. Anderson?.....
"If you THINK out of the box, you'll be prosecuted/punished" --Any Regime
Casteism
i changed grades at my high school in Humble, TX--now that was a felony.
believe it or not, in Texas, unauthorized access to a government computer per Penal Code is a first degree felony. Just under capital murder.
I was 17 and did real hacking. This kid is 14. Yes! Our judicial system is fucked up. Now excuse me while i go get my first misdemeanor DWI.
Let the war begin!
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
A: Teachers are end users and should NOT be local admins on their PCs OR have network admin rights EVER. Yes, even the computer teachers.
B: A password policy in which teachers are allowed to use their last name should not be allowed in the first place.
C: When the hell are the END USERS going to be held responsible for their OWN stupidity? This is the 21st century. Computers are a part of everyone's life now. Ignorance is NOT an excuse. It's slowly getting better but no where near where it should be as this situation shows.
D: The kid isn't innocent, but at most he should be getting detention or some other punishment that would actually teach why using someone else's account is a no-no. Kids will be kids and they need to have boundaries, but not the overreaction he got. I seriously doubt that the people that are overreacting to this and throwing the book at him were perfect saints when they were kids and some of them may have been doing something worse than changing a desktop wallpaper.
E: The ONLY real crime here is that this school district is supposed to be teaching and preparing their kids for life in the 21st century and they are severely unqualified as shown by their bad security habits.
F: I don't care of the school doesn't have a lot of money to spend on having a proper IT setup. Find a way to make it work. It's inexcusable for any entity (especially a school) to not have the basics covered now that we're 15 years in to the 21 century. If you need equipment cheap, reach out to businesses in the area. Many (like the organization I work for) donate old hardware. If you need software, Microsoft has options specifically for schools and even if that is too expensive, there are other platforms that will work (Linux, Mac, etc).
End of line